The Last Post

It's a nice old pub, the Last Post.

Of course, nobody's had a drink there in years. It wasn't that people made positive decisions to give up drinking. They just found they couldn't raise the energy to get down the pub in the evening. Some of them said it wasn't that they had gone teetotal - rather that they felt they could have a drink perfectly well at home. Drink, they said, was a personal thing.

For a while, the dwindling numbers of regulars struggled to keep the old place open. Not least because the people who stayed at home made it clear that they wouldn't let it close. It made them feel good to think there was a pub in the village - even as they opened a can of Stones in their own homes. The tenants tried to keep it open, of course. They were always coming up with new ideas for attracting the punters in - quizzes, barbecues, darts tournaments, egg-throwing. But the writing was on the wall - and I don't just mean in the Ladies'.

Unable to afford any help, the landlady and landlord worked absurdly long hours - up with the lark when the dray was due, off down the Cash & Carry, doing their own cleaning and running the kitchen - their day would start before 7 and often end after midnight, seven days a week. But they had to put the price of the beer up every time the Chancellor raised duty, or the brewery had to jack up the costs. And they were steadily undercut by the supermarket. Some of the villagers even got into exotic tastes like Rioja, or Chardonnay.

Eventually, of course, it had to close - a victim of changing drinking patterns. But the council wouldn't let anyone do anything with it. After all, the history of all that little village was associated with that pub. It was the heart of the community. And what is a village without an inn? The villagers suggested that maybe it would be possible just to open it up a few times a year - Christmas and bank holidays - but it was clearly never going to work. But who did the brewery think the pub was for, they asked, if not for the villagers?

The brewery wanted shot of the place. But the council won't let them knock it down, or build houses in the garden or convert it to flats. After all, the village is in a conservation area. And the villagers won't let the inn go. So the brewery has to keep the place intact, pay for its maintenance - but they can't do anything with it.

But the villagers are happy, because they've still got their inn. It's a nice old pub, the Last Post.